The Pizzica is an Italian popular dance characteristic of the territory of Puglia between Taranto and Salento Leccese. Until the beginning of 20th century, however, this dance was widespread throughout Puglia, with different names. In general, it is part of the large traditional family of the “Tarantelle”.
The word “Pizzica” appears for the first time in a source written in 1797, referring to an evening dance organized by the nobility of Taranto in honor of King Ferdinand IV of Borbone, who was on a visit to the city. In the 19th century the Pizzica was firmly linked to therapeutic practices – made of dance and music, precisely – specific to the “Tarantismo”, following a tradition born in the fourteenth century. The tarantismo refers to the phenomenon of “tarantolati”, people whose illness according to tradition was linked to the “bite” of a tarantula, -the lycosa tarantula- or of a scorpion: the Pizzica and its music was used as a medicine able to heal the effect of the poison.
Over time, this dance was accompanied by an instrument such as the Zampogna until the first decades of the 19th century when but violin and mandolin, tambourine and accordion were introduced.
The Pizzica, therefore, has always represented the dance par excellence of celebrative moments of the communities, constituting the accompanying of rituals linked to tarantismo. In such a case, the Pizzica was performed by little orchestras whose main instruments were the tambourine and the violin, which, with their frenetic sound – usually at a more accelerated rate – had the task of “exorcising” the taranted women, healing them through the dance.
Even today, the Pizzica, now completely unrelated to the phenomenon of tarantismo which has disappeared, is at the center of important studies, linking it to classical Greek antiquity, to the myth of Arakne and to the Dionysian cults.
The dance
The Pizzica is danced as a couple, but it is not a “courting” dance. It was danced in fact not only by a man and a woman, it was widespread and practiced even between relatives and friends, and could also become a form of challenge if danced by two men. This last version was particularly alive in the city of Ostuni (in the province of Brindisi), where the Pizzica among men became an occasion of mockery.
The traditional pizzica forms vary according to the area where it is practiced, and are different from the “Neo-Pizzica”, quite fashionable back in the 80s, which represents a reinvented form of the old dance. The traditional pizzica is part of the large family of the southern Tarantellas, with a wealth of ritualized postures, figurations and mimics of the peasant world. The Neo-Pizzica, instead, uses part of that language, reinterpreting it and making it more flexible and related to the emotions of the dancers. The “Pizzica fencing”, then, was a particular version that simulated a knife duel.
From tarantism to the Taranta festival
The phenomenon of Tarantismo is, by now, only a cultural memory left in the tradition of Puglia. In Salento, however, great attention is still given to the pizzica, with a phenomenon that in recent years has seen an intended revival of this ancient dance, accompanied also by a renewed attention to anthropological and folkloric studies of this reality. So much so to give life to the festa of the Taranta, held in Melpignano.
It is an event that attracts thousands of music and Italian popular dance lovers, and that for years has also involved musicians of international appeal.